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Archive for the ‘cybercrime/malcode’ category: Page 126

Aug 5, 2020

Twitter hackers who targeted Elon Musk and others received $121,000 in bitcoin, analysis shows

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, cybercrime/malcode, Elon Musk, geopolitics

Victims included Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Accounts for those people, and others, posted tweets asking followers to send bitcoin to a specific anonymous address.

For their efforts, the scammers received over 400 payments in bitcoin, with a total value of $121,000 at Thursday’s exchange rate, according to an analysis of the Bitcoin blockchain performed by Elliptic, a cryptocurrency compliance firm.

Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson said it’s a low sum for what appears to be a historic hack that Twitter said involved an insider.

Aug 4, 2020

Iranian hacker group becomes first known APT to weaponize DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH)

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

Kaspersky says Oilrig (APT34) group has been using DoH to silently exfiltrate data from hacked networks.

Aug 3, 2020

The Quantum Gate Hack – Applying Ideas From Gaming Hacks to Quantum Computing

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, information science, quantum physics

PNNL quantum algorithm theorist and developer Nathan Wiebe is applying ideas from data science and gaming hacks to quantum computing.

Everyone working on quantum computers knows the devices are error prone. The basic unit of quantum programming – the quantum gate – fails about once every hundred operations. And that error rate is too high.

While hardware developers and programming analysts are fretting over failure rates, PNNL’s Nathan Wiebe is forging ahead writing code that he is confident will run on quantum computers when they are ready. In his joint appointment role as a professor of physics at the University of Washington, Wiebe is training the next generation of quantum computing theorists and programmers.

Aug 3, 2020

Hackers infect multiple game developers with advanced malware

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

One of the world’s most prolific hacking groups recently infected several Massively Multiplayer Online game makers, a feat that made it possible for the attackers to push malware-tainted apps to one target’s users and to steal in-game currencies of a second victim’s players.

Aug 1, 2020

Florida teen, two others charged in Twitter ‘Bit-Con’ hacking attack

Posted by in category: cybercrime/malcode

Authorities in Florida say a 17 year old was the “mastermind” of the attack that targeted the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kanye West, Bill Gates and others.

Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco on Oct. 21, 2015. David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images file.

Jul 31, 2020

A new neural network could help computers code themselves

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, robotics/AI

Computer programming has never been easy. The first coders wrote programs out by hand, scrawling symbols onto graph paper before converting them into large stacks of punched cards that could be processed by the computer. One mark out of place and the whole thing might have to be redone.

Nowadays coders use an array of powerful tools that automate much of the job, from catching errors as you type to testing the code before it’s deployed. But in other ways, little has changed. One silly mistake can still crash a whole piece of software. And as systems get more and more complex, tracking down these bugs gets more and more difficult. “It can sometimes take teams of coders days to fix a single bug,” says Justin Gottschlich, director of the machine programming research group at Intel.

Jul 31, 2020

Fooling deep neural networks for object detection with adversarial 3D logos

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, robotics/AI

Over the past decade, researchers have developed a growing number of deep neural networks that can be trained to complete a variety of tasks, including recognizing people or objects in images. While many of these computational techniques have achieved remarkable results, they can sometimes be fooled into misclassifying data.

An adversarial attack is a type of cyberattack that specifically targets deep neural networks, tricking them into misclassifying data. It does this by creating adversarial data that closely resembles and yet differs from the data typically analyzed by a deep neural network, prompting the network to make incorrect predictions, failing to recognize the slight differences between real and adversarial data.

In recent years, this type of attack has become increasingly common, highlighting the vulnerabilities and flaws of many deep neural networks. A specific type of that has emerged in recent years entails the addition of adversarial patches (e.g., logos) to images. This attack has so far primarily targeted models that are trained to detect objects or people in 2-D images.

Jul 30, 2020

Exclusive: Chinese-backed hackers targeted COVID-19 vaccine firm Moderna

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cybercrime/malcode, government

More from 2020 “The Movie”

Chinese government-linked hackers targeted biotech company Moderna Inc, a leading U.S.-based coronavirus vaccine research developer, earlier this year in a bid to steal valuable data, according to a U.S. security official tracking Chinese hacking activity.


WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Chinese government-linked hackers targeted biotech company Moderna Inc, a leading U.S.-based coronavirus vaccine research developer, earlier this year in a bid to steal valuable data, according to a U.S. security official tracking Chinese hacking activity.

Jul 28, 2020

Improving massively imbalanced datasets in machine learning with synthetic data

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cybercrime/malcode, robotics/AI

Handling imbalanced datasets in machine learning is a difficult challenge, and can include topics such as payment fraud, diagnosing cancer or disease, and even cyber security attacks. What all of these have in…

Jul 18, 2020

Scientists hack mouse brains to “delete” opioid addiction

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, neuroscience

To treat the mice, the team gave them brain implants: a fiber optic that shined light onto a region called the paraventricular thalamus and blocked withdrawal symptoms. A day later, the mice no longer sought out morphine and relapse — or at least do the lab mouse version of relapsing — even after two weeks.

According to the new research, published Thursday in the journal Neuron, people relapse partially because they miss the high, but more so because the symptoms of withdrawal can often be overwhelming. By down those symptoms, the mice appear to be able to kick the habit more easily.

“Our success in preventing relapse in rodents may one day translate to an enduring treatment of opioid addiction in people,” CAS researcher Zhu Yingjie said in a press release.